Grace

Grace. It’s much more than a compassionate hug from God – it is the enabling power of God to carry out the impossible errands of God on planet earth. It’s God’s perfect work. God’s perfecting work. God’s perfect, perfecting work wrought ever mercifully and compassionately upon the undeserving soul of man. After the cross, there was an outpour of grace. Grace does the saving work through the work Jesus did on the cross. “God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.” (2 Cor. 9:8). His grace is sufficient. Grace provides enabling power. Grace appears 126 times in the New Testament.

            Charles Spurgeon wrote, “Do you desire to subdue sin? Would you be holy? Would you imitate your Master? Do you desire to rise to superlative heights of spirituality? Are you wanting to be made like the angels of God, full of zeal and ardor for the Master’s cause? You cannot without the Spirit: “Without Me you can do nothing.” Oh, branch of the vine, you can have no fruit without the sap! Oh child of God, you have no life within you apart from the life which God gives you through His Spirit!” The branch can do nothing without being connected to the vine. I can do nothing if I’m not connected to Jesus. The sap of the vine is grace. Without grace I can produce no fruit.

            False grace is when you continue living in the flesh (it’s a license for saying that’s it’s ok for flesh to rule the body because grace covers it, and that it’s ok if there are areas that we can’t walk out victoriously). What an abomination to the cross and precious blood of Jesus! The reason He died is for us to be set free from sin. We are called be as Jesus: perfect, holy, slaves to righteousness, dead to sin, pictures of supernatural love, not shrink back from death, deny ourself take up our cross and follow. We need grace, the life and power of God in order to accomplish triumph. We can’t do this in and of ourselves.

            “The purchase of the Cross wasn’t mere forgiveness…it was Pentecost.” – William Law. It’s the power of the Holy Spirit, enabling grace, Christ IN you living His life THROUGH you. Get ready for something amazing! So, Jesus on the cross cried out in a loud voice and gave up His Spirit. At that last moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. When Jesus gave up His Spirit, life then burst forth. We now have access to the throne – it’s available to His saints! It’s like the Spirit of God goes mobile!!! We have access to His presence. In fact, we are now the temple, the holy of holies, the dwelling place of His Spirit! Shekinah glory! He enters us as His temple! Grace is poured out on us, and His Spirit fills us when we are dead to self and alive in Him.

            Walking on water… Getting out of the boat can be legalistic, if we’re doing it in our own strength, if we keep trying and failing because we’re doing it by self and not the Spirit. We can stay in the boat and rot in sin waiting for eternity to come because we don’t realize we can live the Kingdom lifestyle on earth. OR we can walk with Jesus, in Christ, because He walks on water. The impossible is then made possible, in Christ. We can be partakers of the divine nature.

            A.W. Tozer wrote, “The God who had appeared to them as fire throughout all their long history was now dwelling in them as fire. He had moved from without to the interior of their lives. The shekinah blazed on their foreheads over the mercy seat now blazed on their foreheads as an external emblem of fire that had invaded their natures. This was Deity giving himself to ransomed men. The flame was the seal of a new union. They were now men and women of the Fire. Here is the whole final message of the New Testament: through the atonement in Jesus’ blood sinful men may now become one with God. Deity indwelling men! This is Christianity in its fullest effectuation, and even those greater glories of the world to come will be in essence but a greater and more perfect experience of the soul’s union with God. Deity indwelling men! That, I say, is Christianity, and no man has experienced rightly the power of Christian belief until he has known this for himself as a living reality. Everything else is preliminary to this. Incarnation, atonement, justification, regeneration; what are these but acts of God preparatory to the work of invading and the act of indwelling the redeemed human soul?”